Kiwi PM John Key is promising a referendum on redesigning New Zealand’s flag if he is reelected in September’s elections.  His preferred design is already familiar to sport fans, favoring a silver fern on a black field - already in use by sporting teams such as the All Blacks.

“The design of the New Zealand flag symbolizes a colonial and post-colonial era whose time has passed,” Key of the Conservatives said at Wellington's Victoria University.  “The flag remains dominated by the Union Jack in a way that we ourselves are no longer dominated by the United Kingdom.”

Critics say the current flag, in use since 1869 and formally adopted in 1902, is too similar in design to Australia’s.  Supporters say the familiar banner is the one that generations have lived with, and fought and died under.

Opposition leader David Cunliffe of Labour says bringing up the flag referendum is tokenism to distract voters from real issues, such as backlash from rising power prices and mortgage-rate hikes.